PK 6513 Al 1872 ^.^^ EUBAIYAT OMAR KHAYYAM THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA. 2^£nti£i'£ti into lEnglisIj Fcrse. THIRD EDITION. LONDON: BERNARD QUA R ITCH, PICCADILLY. 1872. LONDON : G. NOEMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, MAIDEN LAKE. COVENT GARDEN. OMAR KHAYYAM, THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA. Omae Khayyam was boru at Naishapur in Khorasan in the latter half of our Eleventh, and died within the First Quarter of our Twelfth Century. The slender Story of his Life is curiously twined about that of two other very considerable Figures in their Time and Country : one of whom tells the Story of all Three. This was Nizam ul Mulk, Vizyr to Alp Arslan the Son, and Malik Shah the Grandson, of Toghrul Beg the Tartar, who had wrested Persia from the feeble Suc- cessor of Mahmud the Great, and founded that Selju- kian Dynasty which finally roused Europe into the Crusades. This Nizam ul Mulk, in his Wasiijat — or Testament — which he wrote and left as a Memorial for 1«7, OMA.B kdatyam:, future Statesmen — relates the following, as quoted in tlie Calcutta Review, No. 59, from Mirkhond's History of the Assassins. " ' One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorassan * was the Imam Mowaffak of Naishapur, a man highly ' honoured and reverenced, — may God rejoice his soul ; ' his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it was ' the universal belief that every boy who read the Koran ' or studied the traditions in his presence, would as- ' suredly attain to honour and happiness. For this ' cause did my father send me from Tus to Naishapur * with Abd-us-samad, the doctor of law, that I might ' employ myself in study and learning under the guid- ' ance of that illustrious teacher. Towards me he ever ' turned an eye of favour and kiadness, and as his pupil * I felt for him extreme affection and devotion, so that ' I passed four years in his service. "When I first came ' there, I found two other pupils of mine own ago newly ' arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated Ben ' Sabbah. Eoth were endowed with sharpness of wit ' and the highest natural powers ; and we" three formed THE ASTEONOMER-POET OF PERSIA. a close friendsliip together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me, and we re- peated to each other the lessons we had heard. Now Omar was a native of Naishapiir, while Hasan Ben Sabbah's father was one Ali, a man of austere life and practice, but heretical in his creed and doctrine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam, 'It is a uni- versal belief that the pupils of the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune. Now, even if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us will ; what then shall be our mutual pledge and bond ?' "We answered, Be it what you please.' ' Well,' he said, ' let us make a vow, that to whomsoever this fortune falls, he shall share it equally with the rest, and reserve no pre- eminence for himself.' * Be it so,' we both replied, and on those terms we mutually pledged our words. Tears rolled on, and I went from .Khorassan to Transoxiana, and wandered to Ghazni and Cabul ; and when I returned, I was invested with oITicc, and rose to be administrator of affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp Arsldu.' VI OMAU KnATlAM. " He goes on to state, that years passed by, and both his old school-friends found him out, and came and claimed a share in his good fortune, according to the school-day vow. The Vizier was generous and kept his word. Hasan demanded a place in the government, which the Sultan granted at the Vizier's request ; but discontented with a gradual rise, he plunged into the maze of intrigue of an oriental court, and, failing in a base attempt to supplant his benefactor, he was dis- graced and fell. After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan became the head of the Persian sect of the Is- mailians, — a party of fanatics who had long murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil eminence under the guidance of his strong and evil will. In a.d. 1090, he seized the castle of Alamiit, in the province of Eudbar, which lies in the mountainous tract, south of the Cas- pian Sea ; and it was from this mountain home he ob- tained that evil celebrity among the Crusaders as the OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS, and spread terror through the Mohammedan world ; and it is yet disputed whether the word Assassin, which they have THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA. left iu tlic language of modern Europe as their dark memorial, is derived from the hasJiish, or opiate of liemp- leaves (the Indian IJiajit/), with which they maddened themselves to the sullen pitch of oriental desperation, or from the name of the founder of the dynasty, whom we have seen in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishapiir. One of the countless victims of the Assassin's dagger was Nizam-ul-Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend.^ " Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim the share ; but not to ask for title or oflice. ' The greatest ' boon you can confer on me,' ho said, ' is to let me live ' in a corner under the shadow of your fortune, to spread ' wide the advantages of Science, and pray for your ' long life and prosperity.' The Vizier tells us, that, when he found Omar was really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted him a yearly ' Some of Omar's llubiiyat warn us of the danger of Greatness, tlie instability of Fortune, and while advocating Charity to all Men, recommending us to be too intimate with none. Attdr makes Ni- zam-ul-Mulk use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub. xx\iii.], " When Nizam-ul-Mulk was in the Agony (of Death) ho said, ' Oh God ! I am 'passing away in the hand of the Wind.' " OMAE EHATTaM, pension of 1200 mithJcdls of gold, from the ti'easury of Naisliapur. " At Naistapur thus Jived and died Omar Khayyam, ' busied,' adds the Vizier, ' in winning knowledge of * every kind, and especially in Astronomy, wherein he * attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the Sul- ' tanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained ' great praise for his proficiency in science, and the ' Sultan showered favours upon him,' " When Malik Shah determined to reform the calen- dar, Omar was one of the eight learned men employed to do it ; the result was the Jalcili era (so called from tTalal-u-din, one of the king's names) — 'a computation of time,' says Gribbon, * which surpasses the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.' He is also the author of some astronomical tables, entitled Ziji-Malikshahi," and the French have lately republished and translated an Arabic Treatise of his on Algebra. " His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker, and he is said to have at one time exer- cised that trade, perhaps before Nizam-ul-Mulk's gene- THE ASTEOXOMER-POET OP PERSIA. rosity .raised him to independence. Many Persian poets similarly derive tlieir names from their occupa- tions ; thus we have Attar, * a druggist,' Assar, * an oil presser,' &c.^ Omar himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines : — ' Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science, Has fallen in griefs furnace and been suddenly burned; The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life, And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing !' *' We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates to the close ; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes prefixed to his poems ; it has been printed in the Persian in the appendix to Hyde's Veterum Persarum Meligio, p. 499 ; and D'Her- bclot alludes to it in his Bibliotheque, under Khiam '? — " ' It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that * this King of the "Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at ' Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers, &c., may simply retain the Surname of an hereditary calling. 2 " Philosophc Musulman qui a vecu en Odcur de Saintcte dans la Fin du premier et Ic Commencement du second Siccle," no part of which, except the " Philosophe," can apply to o%r Khayyam. OMAR KIIAl'YAM, * Naisliapiir in the year of the Ilegira, 517 (a.d, 1123) ; * in science he was unrivalled, — the very paragon of his * age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, vrho was one ' of his pupils, relates the following story : * I often * used to hold conversations with my teacher, Omar ' Khayyam, in a garden ; and one day he said to me, ' ' My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may * scatter roses over it.' I wondered at the words he spake, ' but I knew that his were no idle words. ^ Tears after, ^ The Rashness of the Words, according to D'Herbelot, consisted in being so opposed to those in the Koran: " No Man knows where lie shall die." — This Story of Omar reminds me of another so naturally — and, when one remembers how wide of his humble mark the noble sailor aimed — so pathetically told by Captain Cook— not by Doctor Hawkesworth — in his Second Voyage. When leaving Ulietea, " Oreo's last request was for me to return. When he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name of my Marai — Burying- place. As sti-ange a question as this was, I hesitated not a moment to tell him ' Stepney,' the parish in which I live when in London. I was made to repeat it several times over till they could pronounce it; and then ' Stepney Marai no Tootce' was echoed through a hun- dred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put to Mr. Forster by a man on shore; but he gave a different, and indeed more proper answer, by saying, ' No man who used the sea could say where he should be buried.' " THE ASTEOXOMER-POET OF PERSIA. ' wheu I cliauced to revisit Naishapur, I went to liis ' final resting-place, and lo ! it Avas just outside a garden, ' and trees laden with fruit stretclied their boughs over ' the garden wall, and dropped their flowers upon his ' tomb, so as the stone was hidden under them.' " Thus far — without fear of Trespass — from the Cal- cutta Eeview. The writer of it, on reading in India this story of Omar's Grave, was reminded, he says, of Cicero's Account of finding Archimedes' Tomb at Syra- cuse, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to have roses grow over him ; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the present day, I believe. However, to return to Omar. Though the Sultan " shower'd Favours upon him," Omar's Epicurean Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practice he ridiculed, and whose Faith amounts to little more than his own when stript of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their Poets, iucludiug Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) the most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar's material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to Themselves and the People they addressed ; a People quite as quick of Doubt as of Belief ; as keen of Bodily Sense as of Intellectual ; and delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which tlicy could float luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this "World and the Next, on the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for either, Omar was too honest of Heart as well as of Head for this. Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Providence but Destiny, and any AVorld but This, he set about making the most of it ; preferring rather to soothe the Soul through the Senses into Acquiescence with Things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they might he. It has been seen, however, that his Worldly Ambition was not exorbitant; and he very likely takes a humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of Sense above that of the Intellect, in which he must have taken great deliglit, althougli it failed to answer tlie Questions in wliich he, in common with all men, was most vitally interested. For whatever Reason, however, Omar, as before said, has never been popular in his own Country, and there- fore has been but scantily transmitted abroad. The MSS. of his Poems, mutilated beyond the average Casualties of Oriental Transcription, are so rare in the East as scarce to have reacht "Westward at all, in sj^itc of all the acquisitions of Arms and Science. There is no copy at the India House, none at the Bibliotheque Imperiale of Paris. We know but of one in England : No. 140 of the Ouseley MSS. at the Bodleian, written at Shiraz, a.d. 14G0. This contains but 158 Eubaiyat. One in tlic Asiatic Society's Library at Calcutta (of which wc have a Copy), contains (and yet incom])lcte) 516, though swelled to that by all kinds of llcpetition and Corruption. So Von Hammer speaks of Ids Copy as containing about 200, while Dr. Sprengcr catalogues the Lucknow MS. at double that Number.' The Scribes, ' '• Since this Paper wiis vvritlcn (adds the Reviewer in a note), iQ XIV OMAE XnATYAM, too, of tlie Oxford and Calcutta MSS. seem to do their Work under a sort of Protest ; eacli beginning with a Tetrastich (whether genuine or not), taken out of its alphabetical order ; the Oxford with one of Apology ; the Calcutta with one of Expostulation, supposed (says a Notice prefixed to the MS.) to have risen from a Dream, in which Omar's mother asked about his future fate. It may be rendered thus : — " Oh Thou who burn'st in Heart for those who burn " In Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in turn ; " How long be crying, ' Mercy on them, God !' " Why, who art Thou to teach, and He to learn ?" The Bodleian Quatrain pleads Pantheism by way of Justification. " If I myself upon a looser Creed '• Have loosely strung the Jewel of Good deed, " Let this one thing for my Atonement plead : " That One for Two I never did mis-read." The Eeviewer, to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar's Life, concludes his Eeview by comparing him " Me have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Cal- cutta in I80G. This contains 438 Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 51 others not found in some MSS." TUE ASTEONOMER-POET OF PEESIA. with Lucretius, both as to natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle, strong, and cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts pas- sionate for Truth and Justice ; who justly revolted from their Country's false Religion, and false, or foolish. Devotion to it ; but Avho yet fell short of replacing what they subverted by such better Hope as others, witli no better Eevelation to guide them, had yet made a Law to themselves, Lucretius, indeed, with such material as Epicurus furnished, satisfied himself with the theory of so vast a machine for- tuitously constructed, and acting by a Law that imjjlicd no Legislator ; and so composing himself into a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat down to contemplate the mechanical Drama of the Universe wliich he was part Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime description of the Eoman Theatre) discoloured with the lurid reflex of the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun. Omar, more desi)erato, or more careless of any OMAE KUATTAiT, SO compliccatcd System as resulted iu uotliiug but hopeless Necessity, fluug liis own Genius and Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Euin which their insufficient glimpses only served to reveal ; and, pretending sensual pleasure as the serious purpose of Life, only diverted himself with speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit, Good and Evil, and other such questions, easier to start than to run down, and the pursuit of which becomes a very weary sjjort at last ! With regard to the present Translation. The ori- ginal Rubaiyat (as, missing an Arabic Guttural, these Tctrastlchs are more musically called) are independent Stanzas, consisting each of four Lines of equal, though varied, Prosody ; sometimes all rhyming, but oftcuer (as here imitated) the third line a blank. Something as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave that falls over in the last. As usual with such kind of Oriental Verse, the Rubaiyat follow one another according to Alpha- betic Rhyme — a strange succession of Grave and Gay. THE ASTRONOMEU-rOET OF PERSIA. XVH Those here selected are strung into something of an Echiguc, with perhajis a less than equal proportion of the " Drink and make-merry," which (genuine or not) recurs over-frequently in the Original. Either way, the Eesult is sad enough : saddest perhaps when most ostentatiously merry : more apt to move Sorrow than Anger toward the old Tentmaker, who, after vainly endeavouring to unshackle his Steps from Destiny, and to catch some authentic Glimpse of Tomoekow, fell back upon Today (which has out-lasted so many Tomorrows ! ) as the only Ground he got to stand upon, however momentarily slipping from under his Feet. "While the second Edition of this version of Omar was preparing, Monsieur Nicolas, Erench Consul at Eesht, published a very careful and very good Edition of the Text, from a lithograph copy at Teheran, com- prising 4G4 Eubtiiyat, with translation and notes of his own. Mens. Nicolas, whose Edition lias reminded me of OMAR KHAYYAM, several tilings, and instructed me iu others, does not consider Omar to be tlie material Epicurean that I have literally taken him for, but a Mystic, shadowing the Deity under the figure of "Wine, Wine-bearer, &c., as Hdflz is supposed to do ; in short, a Sufi Poet like Hafiz and the rest. I cannot see reason, to alter my opinion, formed as it was more than a dozen years ago when Omar was first shown me by one to whom I am indebted for all I know of Oriental, and very much of other, literature. He admired Omar's Genius so much, that he would gladly have adopted any such Interpretation of his meaning as IMons. Nicolas' if he could. ^ That he could not, appears by his Paper in the Calcutta Eeview already so largely quoted ; in which he argues from the Poems themselves, as well as from what records remain of the Poet's Life. And if more were needed to disprove Mens. Kicolas' ^ Perhaps would have edited the Poems himself some years ago. He may now as little approve of my Version on one side, as of Mons. Nicolas' Theory on the other. THE ASTEONOMEK-POET OF PEUSIA. XIX Theory, there is the Biographical Notice which he himself has drawn up in direct contradiction to the Interpretation of the Poems given in his Notes. (See pp. 13-14 of his Preface.) Indeed I hardly knew poor Omar was so far gone till his Apologist informed me. Tor here we see that, whatever were the "Wine that Hafiz drank and sang, the veritable Juice of the Grape it was which Omar used, not only when carousing with his friends, but (says Mens. Nicolas) in order to excite himself to that pitch of Devotion which others reached by cries and *' hurle- mens." And yet, whenever Wine, "Wine-bearer, &c., occar in the Text — which is often enough — Mons. Nicolas carefully annotates "Dieu," "La Diviaite," &c. : so carefully indeed that one is tempted to think that he was indoctrinated by the Sufi with wliom he read the Poems. (Note to Rub. ii. p. 8.) A Persian would naturally wish to vindicate a distinguished Countryman ; and a Siifi to enrol him in his own sect, which already comprises all the chief Poets of Persia. "Wliat historical Authority has Mons. Nicolas to show that Omar gave himself up " avcc passion a I'etudc clc la ])hilosophie des Soufis" ? (Preface, p. xiii.) The Doc- trines of Pantheism, Materialism, Necessity, &c., were not peculiar to the Sufi ; nor to Lucretius before them ; nor to Epicurus before him ; probably the very original Irreligion of Thinking men from the first ; and very likely to be the spontaneous growth of a Philosopher liviug in an Age of social and political barbarism, under shadow of one of the Two and Seventy Eeligions sup- posed to divide the world. Von Hammer (according to Sprenger's Oriental Catalogue) speaks of Omar as "a Free-thinker, and a great op])onent of Siifism ;" perhaps because, while holding much of their Doctrine, he would not pretend to any inconsistent severity of morals. Sir "W. Ouseley bas wi'itten a Note to something of the same effect on the fly-leaf of the Bodleian MS. And in two Rubaiyat of Mens. Nicolas' own Edition Siif and Sufi arc both disparagingly named. No doubt many of these Quatrains seem unaccount- able unless mystically interpreted ; but many more as unaccountable unless literally. "Were the "Wine TUE ASTRONOMEE-POET OF PERSIA. SXl spiritual, for iustaucc, liow wa"sh the Eody witli it wlicu dead ? Why make cups of the dead clay to be filled with — " La Diviuite " — by some succeeding Mystic ? Mona. Nicolas himself is puzzled by some " bizarres" aud " trop Orieutales" allusions and images — " d'une sensualite quelquefois revoltantc" indeed — which " les convenances" do not permit him to translate ; but still which the reader cannot but refer to " La Divinite."^ No doubt also many of the Quatrains in the Teheran, as in the Calcutta, Copies, are spurious ; such Ruhdiyit' being the common form of Epigram in Persia. But this, at best, tells as much one way as another ; nay, the ^ A Note to Quatrain 23 1 admits that, however clear the mystical meaning of such Images must be to Europeans, they are not quoted without " rougissant" even by laymen in I'ersia — "Quant aux termcs dc tendrcsse qui commencentcc quatrain, comnie tant d'antres dans ce recueil, nos lecteurs, habitues maintenant a I'etrangete des expres- sions si souvent employes par Klieyam pour rendrc scs pcnsees sur I'amour divin, et ii la singularito des images trop orientalcs, d'uiic sensuulito ([uclquefois revoltantc, n'auront pas dc peine Ji sc persuader qu'il s'agit de la Uivinitc, bien que cctte conviction soit vivcmcnt discutco par les mouUahs musulmans, ct memc par bcaucoup de laujucs,